Materials Chemistry and Physics, Vol.213, 122-129, 2018
Preparation and characterization of Ba-doped LaFeO3 nanofibers by electrospinning and their ethanol sensing properties
Uniform Ba-doped LaFeO3 nanofibers (NFs) with pure orthorhombic perovskite phase were successfully fabricated by electrospinning and subsequent calcination, and their ethanol sensing properties were investigated for the first time. The characterized results reveal that the well-crystallized La1-xBaxFeO3 (x <= 0.3) NFs consist of a large amount of interconnected nanocrystals with the mean sizes of about 20 -35 nm, and there are plenty of voids distributed between the nanoparticles within the NFs. Gas sensing investigations indicate that the sensors based on La1-xBaxFeO3 NFs exhibit considerable sensitivity to ethanol gas and the response of sensors first increases and then decreases with the increase of Ba doping content. Among those sensor, the sensor based on La0.75Ba0.25FeO3 NFs shows the best response. To 500 ppm of ethanol gas, the highest response for the La0.75Ba0.25FeO3 NFs based sensor reaches 136.1 at a lower optimum operating temperature of 210 degrees C compared to the La(0.75)Ba(0.25)FeO(3 )powder sensor, and the corresponding response and recovery times are about 42 and 40 s, respectively. Meanwhile, it shows good stability and selectivity to ethanol gas. Our results demonstrate that the as-prepared Ba-doped LaFeO3 NFs can be a promising candidate for good performance ethanol sensors. (C) 2018 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.